Release readiness

A judgement about whether a piece of software is sufficiently tested, stable, and low-risk to be deployed to users. Release readiness takes into account test coverage, outstanding defects, severity of known issues, risk exposure, and stakeholder confidence. It is one of the decisions that is often explicitly identified as remaining human responsibility and not something that should be delegated to AI, because it requires contextual knowledge of the business, the users, and the acceptable risk threshold that an AI tool cannot reliably supply.